Subaru rolls out its Ascent full-size SUV
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Facebook out to read minds
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg used the developer conference to talk about making the first augmented reality camera. Interestingly, Facebook has revealed plans to develop a new type of smartphone capable of reading people's minds.

United to compensate people on flight when man dragged off

United States media published an email Munoz sent earlier to employees, in which he said the passenger "defied" authorities and "compounded" the incident. "No one should ever be mistreated this way".

Some noted that the refusal of transport may have been illegal. The incident was captured on video by several passengers on the flight.

Of course, it's good for some passengers, too: Of the 475,000 people who were bumped off flights on the 12 largest airlines previous year, 91% did it voluntarily, agreeing to take cash or a travel voucher and a seat on a later departure. When no one voluntarily came forward, United selected four passengers at random.

The host was not satisfied with a single episode attack on United Airlines.

First off, airlines don't want to break up families, because bumping Mom but leaving an 8-year-old on the flight isn't going to work. Typically it's those paying the lowest fares, lacking membership in a frequent-flyer program, or checking in late who are most at risk.

Officers could have asked themselves whether the airline had an option to reconsider its actions, said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a group that has called for greater restraint from police officers.

As Daniel Gross observed at Slate.com, airlines have squeezed their overbooking privilege until it screams for mercy, even as they're consistently flying fuller planes. In the most recent boom-and-bust airline cycle, the industry "load factor" - the percentage of seats filled - bottomed out at 72.21 percent in February 2009, in the teeth of a crushing recession, but more recently has run in the mid-80s. As Gross pointed out, a two-hour delay in a flight could translate to a missed family event or a lost business contract. While airlines are required to maintain and provide data on customer complaints, they don't have to turn over information about every complaint that they get, allowing them to hide some of their operational problems. But so was United's need to get a crew from Chicago to Louisville.

Instead, airlines sell more tickets than there are seats on a plane, and are generally able to properly forecast demand to avoid major disruptions, Mann said.

Presumably, it was that list the gate agents went to when they had to choose one unlucky passenger to kick off after three had accepted monetary offers to give up their seats.

David Dao, the doctor who was videotaped being dragged by police officers, has signalled that he would fight back the case in court. United, like other legacy airlines, may be counting on inertia to retain passengers.